Air Canada welcomes today’s announcement by the Canadian Government of an amended bilateral air services agreement between Canada and The People’s Republic of China.

“Air Canada applauds these changes to the bilateral and we thank the Canadian and Chinese governments for their hard work to expand the agreement. Air Canada fully supports the liberalization of air services between Canada andChina, which is Canada’s second largest trading partner and a key market for our airline,” said Ben Smith, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at Air Canada. “This summer Air Canada has already added a total of seven weekly return flights to Beijing from Toronto and Vancouver, raising the number of Air Canada return flights toBeijing and Shanghai to 35 per week. The enhanced bilateral further expands opportunities for Air Canada to extend its coverage of cities in China in cooperation with our Star Alliance partners Air China and Shenzhen Airlines. These changes will also support our international expansion, which we intend to accelerate as five new Boeing 777-300 aircraft start entering service in our fleet this month and the first of 37 Dreamliners begin arriving in early 2014.”